DAY 44. Julio Benedetti

Tourism Consultant

__________________

English:

Julio Benedetti is a Brazil & Holland-based Tourism Consultant specialized in competitiveness, innovation, creativity and destination marketing. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from UNIVALI (Brazil) and a Master’s degree from NHTV Breda (Netherlands), and has lived and worked in various countries in the last 10 years, including Brazil, India, Italy, USA, Holland, Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam and Laos. His last Brazil-based job was at the Brazilian Tourism Board/EMBRATUR.

He is also a tourism academic researcher, freelancer journalist and blogger. For more information, please check: here or here.

__________________

What is your impression about a brand called Brazil?

As a Brazilian citizen, a tourist & also a tourism specialist, I believe that this brand called Brazil is one of the most complex brands I’ve come across – probably because it incorporates or actually just reflects the complexity of Brazil itself as a nation, a society or a destination. I can reflect about this brand from 3 different perspectives:

1) The brand Brazil as per the Brazilians: we are probably one of the most patriotic but also ethnomasochist societies worldwide. In Brazil you hear quite pretentious sayings such as “God is Brazilian”, “Brazil, a land blessed by God”, “I wouldn’t change Brazil for anywhere else in this world” – even from people who are not religious or who had never had the chance to see the world. At the same time, when things go wrong in our country, we Brazilians are also the first to state things like: “What did you expect? This is Brazil!”, “Only in Brazil these kind of things happen” and so on. This contradictory aspect is what intrigues me the most about Brazil & Brazilians. As a tourism specialist, I believe that only when we are sure about our own identity, we will be able to promote ourselves (our brand) as a nation or a tourism destination in a coherent and effective way. Even if for “own identity”, we opt for contradiction, diversity and incoherence. But the point is: we need to make a decision at last.

2) The brand Brazil as per foreigners: foreigners seem to love – let’s be clear, mostly while on holidays, not when doing business – everything that we Brazilians enjoy denying about ourselves: our exoticism, our passion for soccer, women and samba. At the same time that we feel repulsion for these stereotypes, those are the first aspects of our society that we export abroad. And not only abroad: just turn on the TV in Brazil or open the newspaper, and I challenge you not to see tropical exotic beaches, women, music or soccer. But having spent 4 years of my life in Asia, what we don’t but we should see is that this global shift we are passing through implies in new visitors, brand-making potential tourists – Asians – who have not “decided” yet about their stereotypes and imagery of Brazil. We should focus on how to construct & shape our image to this “new world”. But we should be proud and true to what we really are, not to what we would like ourselves to be or look like. Let’s embrace instead of deny our characteristics.

3) The brand Brazil as per its brand potentiality: this is what worries me and for I work the most: the future of this brand called Brazil. As the host country of upcoming hallmark events, such as the FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games, we must be aware – as Brazilians or foreigners, brand and tourism specialists or not – that our success story is not yet written, thus it’s not certain. We will only succeed if we work (hard) for it. There seems to be a sort of underlying omen that Brazil and its brand will inevitably succeed in the future, regardless of what we do, as if we could just sit, relax and wait for this magical moment to happen. But it’s an illusion and a wrong assumption to take this for granted. Yes, Brazil is the country of the future, but we can’t let it be always about the future, because the future never arrives…